joe henderson

Joe Henderson is sitting at a press conference in Carnegie Hall,
New York, patiently answering another dumb leading question. Someone
among the contingent of journalists has just asked this legendary
tenor saxophonist -- who turned 57 this week -- why it has taken so
long for him to be recognised.
Henderson smiles wanly and with the...

If rock is the culture which eats its
young -- or at least allows Kurt Cobain to leave a suicide note which
says “I need to be slightly numb in order to regain the enthusiasm
I once had as a child” -- then jazz is the music which barely
allows youth to exist at all.
The contract of jazz almost demands its
young artists leap...

It was emblematic of the soul rebel
career of Miles Davis that in his final years he was painting as much
as he was playing, had a cameo spot in a movie (Dingo) playing a
pre-electric period jazz trumpeter, exchanging tapes with Prince,
recorded with rapper Eazy Mo Bee and – most surprising of all
turned up at the Montreux Jazz...

Although now 80 and still playing at the time of this writing, the problem tenor giant Rollns has faced from the Sixties onwards is that no matter how great he plays, his every accomplishment is almost invariably compared to his exceptional work between 1955 and '58. That was when he recorded Saxophone Colossus, Way Out West, the set which...